The Dead River
by Min Daae
Summary: Monologue. Mildmay worries.


They were bad dreams. And after they took the obligation d'ame off, too, so they weren't just Felix's either, and I don't know if that made it better or worse. It wasn't like they woke me up screaming or nothing, just…ugly, that's all. Really ugly.

There were a few different ones, all of them were equally bad though. The one where this big Keeper was whipping him except Felix wasn't a kid but all grown up and couldn't keep it from happening because they took his magic. And the one where it was all dark and all I could hear was Felix in this little broken voice going 'please, stop, no' from everywhere at once. But the worst ones were the ones with the Sim, and the water in them.

In that one I was sitting somewhere near the water with Cardenio, just talking a little bit, and my leg wasn't fucked up or nothing, and then I'd look up the river and see something and as it floated by Cardenio'd reach out with his pole and snag it, bringing it in to us. And he'd say, "Well fuck me sideways," and reach into the black water and haul the dead body out, and sometimes I'd help because that's what you do.

And it was Felix, too. That was never first thing I noticed, that was always the tattoos and we'd both kind of look at each other and wonder what any hocus was doing in the Sim. But then I'd see the purple finger marks around his neck on the bone-white skin, and that explained it, didn't it? And in the dream it didn't matter that it wasn't an easy thing to murder a wizard. Then I'd notice the hair, all tangled and bright red, and then in the dream I'd know it was Felix, but not really in the dream, just in my head.

In the dream I just looked at Cardenio and said, "Fuck me sideways is right," and we both looked back at the dead body.

And I don't know what was worst, the way in the dream I just kind of looked at him and could imagine how whoever'd killed him had put their hands just so because I knew those marks I could have made myself, and I could imagine how it would have felt, his pulse going wild under their fingers, choking the life out of him. Or if it was worse the way his weird skew eyes were filmy and glazed and stared up at the sky without getting anything. I've always hated dead eyes. Or if it was worse the way his expression was frozen in one of shock and horror and pain that hurt to see.

Fact was it was all pretty bad, and that's when I started telling myself to wake up, but dreams don't always work that way, and these didn't like me trying to do that.

"Who'd toss a hocus in the river?" Cardenio asked, and added, "After strangling with their bare hands…Kethe, I thought you were the only one who'd done that," and then he looked at me, realizing what he'd said. And I just shrugged and it occurred to me to wonder if maybe I hadn't done the job, because it wasn't impossible, was it?

In the dream I just kind of snorted. "Who wouldn't if they could?" And Cardenio kind of laughed a little nervously and then we were both quiet again, because it wasn't really something either of us could exactly joke about.

Cardenio shrugged. "Maybe someone will claim this one," he said, and started to pole back to shore, and I remember in the dream I thought about Vey Coruscant and what she would do with a dead hocus and kind of shivered.

"Make sure you know who it is," was all I said, though, and then we were at the dock, and I shot one last look at Felix's dead body all limp and pale in the bottom of the boat, and woke up with his drowned face in my head.

So that was the dream, and it was a bad one, and I didn't like it at all at the best of times. But then there was that night I woke up with his drowned face in my head and Felix was there all wet and shivering and for a second I thought he was a ghost or something and he really had been drowned and I looked for those finger marks on his neck but then I realized that it wasn't a dream anymore.

And his voice was all shaky and weird and he told me to hold his head underwater and drown him. And all of a sudden I couldn't say anything but just sit there like an idiot because all I could see was Felix drowned in the bottom of Cardenio's boat with that expression on his face that didn't seem to believe this could be happening even after he was dead, and his eyes all glassy and bled of all their color, and I just fucking wanted to vomit.

I might have yelled at him a little, then, maybe a little more than I should've, but he came back and it was the fantôme again I guess and like an idiot he hadn't even mentioned it to me because he thought he was supposed to handle it by himself, which of course he couldn't. But he wouldn't let me deal with it then, either, wouldn't let me help, just told me to go back to sleep and slunk away his shoulders up by his ears, and I just watched him go because I'm a fucking idiot and I always let him do stupid stuff like that.

I didn't sleep after that, not that night, and just lay there looking at the ceiling and thinking what if I'd said yes, or what if the binding-by-forms had still been there and he could have made me, and maybe it would be my finger marks on his neck when he came floating down the river.

And then I was thinking more about how what if it had happened, because that wasn't that far fetched, a lot of people wanted Felix dead and I had a reputation, I was the only one who'd ever killed a hocus. And I wouldn't have known anything either, if someone had turned up and told me to kill this hocus, and offered me a lot of money, I might have done it. Why not? Just another hocus.

The more I thought about it the sicker it made me thinking that someone might have asked me to murder Felix and I might have done it never knowing and the next morning he would have been floating in the Sim he hated so much and no one would have given a damn except a few people who might have cheered quietly.

_How many people have you killed? _

I don't know why, that disturbed me more than any of the others, just thinking about that. It was only chance it hadn't after all. Only chance no one had set the best assassin in the Lower City on one of their enemies.

Even Strych had brought that up once. _No matter what promises you swore, whatever your slavish loyalties, darling, I could break you. I could break them all and send you like the well trained dog you are hunting your own brother, and you would die before failing to bring him down. I've considered it, considered letting myself watch as he cannot kill you even at the cost of his own life, or else killing you and then hating himself for it…_ And I'd thought he might do it. It terrified me a little, and I felt even worse thinking that Felix might kill me and then beat himself up about it even if it was to save his own life, and wasn't that just the stupidest fucking thing ever.

I went to sleep again eventually, and sure enough the dream came up, but this time I could remember doing it, could remember putting my fingers around his neck from behind and feel his pulse going wild and then stopping. And the feeling of his hair on my fingers and the touch of his skin was so real I woke up and got up and went over to check on him because fuck me sideways if I wasn't afraid he might be drowned, no matter what thinking said.

And he was alive, all right, curled up in that funny way of his more like a kept-thief than a grown man, and eventually I gave up on going back to sleep and just dealt myself cards and kept an eye on him.

I could just pretend it wasn't because I felt guilty about strangling him in my dream.

Because that was just stupid.


End file.
